Chapter Two
Daniel
“I need to take one more arts class before I graduate. I want to get it over with now, so I can focus on my senior project next year. Which one will cause me the least amount of pain?”
I’m in the living room with my two housemates, and we’re finalizing our schedules for junior year.
Trace leans over and looks at my computer screen. “These five are your only options?”
“They’re the ones that don’t have prerequisites. They also fit into my schedule around football and other classes. So, yeah. These five.”
Trace is frowning. “Not Experiments in Drama. That one will be full of feminists and social justice warriors. How about Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald?”
Beeker shakes his head. “Gotta disagree with Mr. Men’s Rights Activist on this one. Experiments in Drama will be full of girls with no inhibitions and the guys will all be gay. Statistically speaking, you’re not going to find better odds.”
Trace looks disgusted. “Never fuck a feminist. You’ll just get accused of rape the next day. Unless you want to ask for consent every ten seconds. ‘I’d like to take off your shirt. Do you consent? I’d like to touch your breast. Do you consent? I’d like to—’”
“Shut up.”
My voice is harsh, and Trace looks surprised. But on this particular issue I’m with the feminists. Consent is black and white. It’s not something I ever joke about, and I don’t stay quiet if someone else jokes about it, either. Including a housemate.
Trace and Beeker and I all go to the same church, and we decided to get a place together last year. At the time, I thought it was a great idea. I was psyched to live with people who share my values. People who believe in God, who do volunteer work, who want to make the world a better place. But lately, I’ve been starting to wonder if Trace and I really do share values—or just a church.
Trace levers himself up from the beat up old couch and heads for the kitchen. He mutters “Galahad” as he goes, but I don’t call him on it.
It’s been a while since I’ve heard that nickname. It dogged me freshman year after a guy in my dorm stuck it on me, but it faded away sophomore year.
I hate it. I try to be a decent person and live a decent life, but you don’t do good things hoping to get praised for them. Whenever I hear “Galahad” it makes me think of someone who wears virtue like a suit of armor, showing off how pure of heart he is. Someone holier-than-thou.
I don’t want to be that guy.
“What’s with Trace?” Beeker asks. “He’s been in a bad mood for days.”
I shake my head. “No idea.”
“Well, fuck him.” Beeker waves a hand at my computer. “And take Experiments in Drama. Not just because it’ll be a good dating pool, but because it won’t be any work. Acting stuff, right? No essays or exams or anything.”
That’s a selling point. I’ve got some tough courses this semester and I could use an easy class on my schedule.
Plus, I have a deep dark secret. I used to do the Christmas pageant at my church back home. The show was as cheesy as you’d expect and none of us were great actors or anything, but the first year I did it there was this moment that…I don’t know.
I was playing Joseph. I rehearsed dutifully for the three weeks before Christmas, but I was pretty bored by the whole thing. Then, when we showed up at church to perform on Christmas Eve, there were all these candles.
Hundreds of candles.
Something about the candlelight and the smell of frankincense and myrrh—someone had brought in the real thing for us to use that night—kind of got to me. It made the cheap set and costumes seem real. And for a moment—a couple of minutes, maybe—I actually felt like Joseph. I wanted to take care of Mary and the baby, and do my best to be a good man. And I was overwhelmed by the light of God.
Okay, that sounds as cheesy as the show was. But it’s true.
Anyway, I sign up for Experiments in Drama. I don’t know if it’s the acting thing or the no homework thing that tips the scale, but it’s not the dating prospect thing.
Because here’s another deep dark secret.
I’m a virgin. I’ve dated and I’ve fooled around, but I haven’t had sex yet.
That was okay in high school and when I was a freshman. But sometime last year, girls started to think it was weird that I didn’t want to sleep with them. By the end of spring semester, I stopped dating and fooling around because I didn’t want to talk about why I wouldn’t do more.
I know there are girls out there who haven’t had sex yet and aren’t ready to. Maybe I’ll meet one of those girls this year and get back to fooling around.
But until then, I’m not looking to date.
I know where my focus will be this semester. Football. Engineering. Church. Community service.
And Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7:30 pm, Experiments in Drama.